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An die ferne Geliebte, Op 98

Introduction

An die ferne Geliebte is Beethoven’s only true song cycle, and the first important example of the form. It is based on poems taken from Alois Jeitteles’ 1815 collection entitled Gedichte in Selam, the name of an almanac edited by one Ignaz Castelli. Both Jeitteles and Castelli were members of an artistic group called ‘Lülamshöhle’, whose musical members included Salieri and Weber (Beethoven was an infrequent guest at their meetings).

All six poems concern the feelings of love as translated through nature – or at least the kind of idealized countryside vistas that had already been immortalized in the ‘Pastoral’ Symphony. All are cast in strophic form except the last, but Beethoven constantly varies and develops his accompaniments. Although these musical changes are not entirely for poetic reasons, they nevertheless help create a sense of progressive musical architecture totally denied strict strophic form.

Beethoven’s poetic sensitivity extends to such lengths as Wo die Berge so blau being kept on an uncomplicated harmonic leash until the words ‘Innere Pein’. Similarly, the move to the tonic minor for the last three stanzas of Leichte Segler in den Höhen is a moment of profound musical insight.

The cycle is quite literally brought full circle by the final song, which recalls material from the first. This technique was to prove a profound influence on the song cycles of Robert Schumann, who also concealed a number of other musical references to An die ferne Geliebte in his work, including the Beethovenian Fantasy in C, Op 17.

Recordings

'This would have been a massive project for even the biggest international label, but from a small independent … it is a miracle. An ideal Christ ...'Please give me the complete Hyperion Schubert songs set – all 40 discs –and, in the next life, I promise I'll "re-gift" it to Schubert himself … ...» More

'This enterprising, often revelatory set should intrigue and delight anyone interested in the development of the Lied' (Gramophone)'Since making music with friends was Schubert's whole raison d'etre, this 3-CD box is an inspired idea … led by the soprano Susan Gritton, ...» More

Beethoven was not a keen song writer, yet despite this almost half of his total works call for a voice. The present album includes some of the best of those compositions interpreted by accomplished tenor John Mark Ainsley and his accompanist Iain ...» More

'Stephan Genz has one of the most beautiful voices around today, used with such authority and imagination that I have found myself playing his Beethov ...'This disc, immaculately recorded, should win many new friends for Beethoven's songs' (The Daily Telegraph)» More

'Stephan Genz has one of the most beautiful voices around today, used with such authority and imagination that I have found myself playing his Beetho ...'This disc, immaculately recorded, should win many new friends for Beethoven's songs' (The Daily Telegraph)» More

The publication of this cycle must have struck Schubert as a big surprise, the eruption of a volcano at the least expected time. Beethoven’s last song-composing phase had been 1809–1810—including a number of significant Goethe settings. Since then there had been only Beethoven songs of little importance scattered here and there in the occasional almanac. In this field the Master had long fallen silent. Schubert would have had every right to believe that he had built for himself, during his incredibly fecund year of 1815, a fortress where his achievement, in song at least, was untouchable by anyone else—in the past, certainly, and in the present too. And then suddenly Beethoven published an opus the like of which had never appeared before. This was a set of six songs—but other composers had published lieder in sets. This was a set of six connected songs which belong together as a single musical construction. Beethoven had more or less invented the song cycle and, without knowing it of course, he had stolen a march on Schubert in the one field where the younger man had felt the right to consider himself pre-eminent. Beethoven’s new work was published in the year it was written (1816) and became famous overnight; the poetess Marianne von Willemer enthused about the cycle in a letter to Goethe. Poor Schubert had to wait another two years before he saw the first of his songs reach publication in an almanac.

The remainder of Schubert’s career was engaged in planning a fitting response to An die ferne Geliebte—a search for the solution to the problem of the song cycle. Beethoven had clearly sought out a text suited to his purposes, and the doctor–poet Alois Jeitteles, had provided it (the custom-made lyrics are printed nowhere else). Soon afterwards Schubert’s friend Mayrhofer provided a similarly extended poem and the result was the cantata-like Einsamkeit, D620, where the music sub-divides into six definite sections while remaining all of a piece. This was in 1818. In 1823 and 1827 Schubert wrote two song cycles to the poems of Wilhelm Müller—the immortal Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Here were twinned versions of his solution to the idea of cycle, an implied narrative where the musical numbers depended on each other without being contiguous. In 1827, for a public concert (the first which featured Schubert’s music entirely, and which was planned to mark the first centenary of Beethoven’s death) he wrote a piece for voice, horn and piano, Auf dem Strom, D943, with many Beethovenian resonances (including a quotation from that composer’s fifth symphony). And at the end of his life he wrote a set of Rellstab songs, the texts of which had been on Beethoven’s desk when he died, and which Schubert envisaged as a new homage to the idea of the Distant Beloved—in fact every song in the so-called Schwanengesang, including the Heine settings, is an exploration of this theme where the lover herself is absent and at a distance. Robert Schumann was also bewitched by Beethoven’s cycle—both by the music, and the idea behind it that he linked to his absent Clara. The opening of the sixth song is quoted at the end of his piano Fantasie, Op 17, in the sixth song of Frauenliebe und -leben, and in the finales of the Op 41 No 2 String Quartet and the Symphony No 2, Op 61.

The six ‘movements’ of the Beethoven cycle are as follows: I: Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck E flat major 3/4 A noble melody supported by crotchets and quavers; this becomes more lively with an accelerando over several bars, like the quickening heartbeat of someone excited by thoughts of being reunited with his lover. II: Ein wenig geschwinde G major 6/8 This is the music of gentle musings and longings. The whispering vocal monotone of ‘Dort im ruhigen Tal’ as the piano limns the melody is a passage that recalls Reichardt (cf that composer’s Erlkönig). Indeed there is much in this music that suggests that Beethoven was not impervious to, or ignorant of, the achievements of the Berlin lieder school although he railed against the Berlin composers on occasion. III: Allegro assai A flat major 4/4 Dancing, weaving triplets support detached vocal quavers and denote both the music of the brook and the airiness of clouds floating through the air—a gentle scherzo. IV: Nicht zu geschwinde, angenehm und mit viel Empfindung A flat major 6/8 Here is more music of winds and birdsong depicted with Beethovenian spaciousness. Mirror imagery of the beloved is reflected in the counterpoint of the accompaniment, and a quickening tempo leads into the next section. V: Vivace C major 4/4 We hear the return of May and of Spring and the unending dance of Nature in a faster version of the dactylic rhythms of Beethoven’s Symphony No 7—both persistent and inviting. The composer depicts the happiness of the birds as they build their nests; the tiny little jagged piano interludes suggest the twittering of fledglings. VI: Andante con moto, cantabile E flat major 2/4 This is the longest of the movements in that it contains two musical sections compressed into one. The piano, in an eight-bar solo passage, introduces the big tune of the cycle; this in turn introduces the presentation of the garland of songs to the beloved—a gentle melody accompanied by undulating semiquavers. These then flower into throbbing sextuplets—sunset music not dissimilar to the Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel. Next, at ‘Dann vor diesen Liedern weichet’ (Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck for the second time) there is a recapitulation of the music that we have heard at the opening of the cycle, with a similar quickening of pace as at the end of that section. This leads into an Allegro molto e con brio that reaffirms that the distance between the lovers can be conquered by a loving heart. The work ends with an exultant postlude for the piano.

The publication of this cycle must have struck Schubert as a big surprise, the eruption of a volcano at the least expected time. Beethoven’s last song-composing phase had been 1809–1810—including a number of significant Goethe settings. Since then there had been only Beethoven songs of little importance scattered here and there in the occasional almanac. In this field the Master had long fallen silent. Schubert would have had every right to believe that he had built for himself, during his incredibly fecund year of 1815, a fortress where his achievement, in song at least, was untouchable by anyone else—in the past, certainly, and in the present too. And then suddenly Beethoven published an opus the like of which had never appeared before. This was a set of six songs—but other composers had published lieder in sets. This was a set of six connected songs which belong together as a single musical construction. Beethoven had more or less invented the song cycle and, without knowing it of course, he had stolen a march on Schubert in the one field where the younger man had felt the right to consider himself pre-eminent. Beethoven’s new work was published in the year it was written (1816) and became famous overnight; the poetess Marianne von Willemer enthused about the cycle in a letter to Goethe. Poor Schubert had to wait another two years before he saw the first of his songs reach publication in an almanac.

The remainder of Schubert’s career was engaged in planning a fitting response to An die ferne Geliebte—a search for the solution to the problem of the song cycle. Beethoven had clearly sought out a text suited to his purposes, and the doctor–poet Alois Jeitteles, had provided it (the custom-made lyrics are printed nowhere else). Soon afterwards Schubert’s friend Mayrhofer provided a similarly extended poem and the result was the cantata-like Einsamkeit, D620, where the music sub-divides into six definite sections while remaining all of a piece. This was in 1818. In 1823 and 1827 Schubert wrote two song cycles to the poems of Wilhelm Müller—the immortal Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Here were twinned versions of his solution to the idea of cycle, an implied narrative where the musical numbers depended on each other without being contiguous. In 1827, for a public concert (the first which featured Schubert’s music entirely, and which was planned to mark the first centenary of Beethoven’s death) he wrote a piece for voice, horn and piano, Auf dem Strom, D943, with many Beethovenian resonances (including a quotation from that composer’s fifth symphony). And at the end of his life he wrote a set of Rellstab songs, the texts of which had been on Beethoven’s desk when he died, and which Schubert envisaged as a new homage to the idea of the Distant Beloved—in fact every song in the so-called Schwanengesang, including the Heine settings, is an exploration of this theme where the lover herself is absent and at a distance. Robert Schumann was also bewitched by Beethoven’s cycle—both by the music, and the idea behind it that he linked to his absent Clara. The opening of the sixth song is quoted at the end of his piano Fantasie, Op 17, in the sixth song of Frauenliebe und -leben, and in the finales of the Op 41 No 2 String Quartet and the Symphony No 2, Op 61.

The six ‘movements’ of the Beethoven cycle are as follows: I: Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck E flat major 3/4 A noble melody supported by crotchets and quavers; this becomes more lively with an accelerando over several bars, like the quickening heartbeat of someone excited by thoughts of being reunited with his lover. II: Ein wenig geschwinde G major 6/8 This is the music of gentle musings and longings. The whispering vocal monotone of ‘Dort im ruhigen Tal’ as the piano limns the melody is a passage that recalls Reichardt (cf that composer’s Erlkönig). Indeed there is much in this music that suggests that Beethoven was not impervious to, or ignorant of, the achievements of the Berlin lieder school although he railed against the Berlin composers on occasion. III: Allegro assai A flat major 4/4 Dancing, weaving triplets support detached vocal quavers and denote both the music of the brook and the airiness of clouds floating through the air—a gentle scherzo. IV: Nicht zu geschwinde, angenehm und mit viel Empfindung A flat major 6/8 Here is more music of winds and birdsong depicted with Beethovenian spaciousness. Mirror imagery of the beloved is reflected in the counterpoint of the accompaniment, and a quickening tempo leads into the next section. V: Vivace C major 4/4 We hear the return of May and of Spring and the unending dance of Nature in a faster version of the dactylic rhythms of Beethoven’s Symphony No 7—both persistent and inviting. The composer depicts the happiness of the birds as they build their nests; the tiny little jagged piano interludes suggest the twittering of fledglings. VI: Andante con moto, cantabile E flat major 2/4 This is the longest of the movements in that it contains two musical sections compressed into one. The piano, in an eight-bar solo passage, introduces the big tune of the cycle; this in turn introduces the presentation of the garland of songs to the beloved—a gentle melody accompanied by undulating semiquavers. These then flower into throbbing sextuplets—sunset music not dissimilar to the Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel. Next, at ‘Dann vor diesen Liedern weichet’ (Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck for the second time) there is a recapitulation of the music that we have heard at the opening of the cycle, with a similar quickening of pace as at the end of that section. This leads into an Allegro molto e con brio that reaffirms that the distance between the lovers can be conquered by a loving heart. The work ends with an exultant postlude for the piano.

The publication of this cycle must have struck Schubert as a big surprise, the eruption of a volcano at the least expected time. Beethoven’s last song-composing phase had been 1809–1810—including a number of significant Goethe settings. Since then there had been only Beethoven songs of little importance scattered here and there in the occasional almanac. In this field the Master had long fallen silent. Schubert would have had every right to believe that he had built for himself, during his incredibly fecund year of 1815, a fortress where his achievement, in song at least, was untouchable by anyone else—in the past, certainly, and in the present too. And then suddenly Beethoven published an opus the like of which had never appeared before. This was a set of six songs—but other composers had published lieder in sets. This was a set of six connected songs which belong together as a single musical construction. Beethoven had more or less invented the song cycle and, without knowing it of course, he had stolen a march on Schubert in the one field where the younger man had felt the right to consider himself pre-eminent. Beethoven’s new work was published in the year it was written (1816) and became famous overnight; the poetess Marianne von Willemer enthused about the cycle in a letter to Goethe. Poor Schubert had to wait another two years before he saw the first of his songs reach publication in an almanac.

The remainder of Schubert’s career was engaged in planning a fitting response to An die ferne Geliebte—a search for the solution to the problem of the song cycle. Beethoven had clearly sought out a text suited to his purposes, and the doctor–poet Alois Jeitteles, had provided it (the custom-made lyrics are printed nowhere else). Soon afterwards Schubert’s friend Mayrhofer provided a similarly extended poem and the result was the cantata-like Einsamkeit, D620, where the music sub-divides into six definite sections while remaining all of a piece. This was in 1818. In 1823 and 1827 Schubert wrote two song cycles to the poems of Wilhelm Müller—the immortal Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Here were twinned versions of his solution to the idea of cycle, an implied narrative where the musical numbers depended on each other without being contiguous. In 1827, for a public concert (the first which featured Schubert’s music entirely, and which was planned to mark the first centenary of Beethoven’s death) he wrote a piece for voice, horn and piano, Auf dem Strom, D943, with many Beethovenian resonances (including a quotation from that composer’s fifth symphony). And at the end of his life he wrote a set of Rellstab songs, the texts of which had been on Beethoven’s desk when he died, and which Schubert envisaged as a new homage to the idea of the Distant Beloved—in fact every song in the so-called Schwanengesang, including the Heine settings, is an exploration of this theme where the lover herself is absent and at a distance. Robert Schumann was also bewitched by Beethoven’s cycle—both by the music, and the idea behind it that he linked to his absent Clara. The opening of the sixth song is quoted at the end of his piano Fantasie, Op 17, in the sixth song of Frauenliebe und -leben, and in the finales of the Op 41 No 2 String Quartet and the Symphony No 2, Op 61.

The six ‘movements’ of the Beethoven cycle are as follows: I: Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck E flat major 3/4 A noble melody supported by crotchets and quavers; this becomes more lively with an accelerando over several bars, like the quickening heartbeat of someone excited by thoughts of being reunited with his lover. II: Ein wenig geschwinde G major 6/8 This is the music of gentle musings and longings. The whispering vocal monotone of ‘Dort im ruhigen Tal’ as the piano limns the melody is a passage that recalls Reichardt (cf that composer’s Erlkönig). Indeed there is much in this music that suggests that Beethoven was not impervious to, or ignorant of, the achievements of the Berlin lieder school although he railed against the Berlin composers on occasion. III: Allegro assai A flat major 4/4 Dancing, weaving triplets support detached vocal quavers and denote both the music of the brook and the airiness of clouds floating through the air—a gentle scherzo. IV: Nicht zu geschwinde, angenehm und mit viel Empfindung A flat major 6/8 Here is more music of winds and birdsong depicted with Beethovenian spaciousness. Mirror imagery of the beloved is reflected in the counterpoint of the accompaniment, and a quickening tempo leads into the next section. V: Vivace C major 4/4 We hear the return of May and of Spring and the unending dance of Nature in a faster version of the dactylic rhythms of Beethoven’s Symphony No 7—both persistent and inviting. The composer depicts the happiness of the birds as they build their nests; the tiny little jagged piano interludes suggest the twittering of fledglings. VI: Andante con moto, cantabile E flat major 2/4 This is the longest of the movements in that it contains two musical sections compressed into one. The piano, in an eight-bar solo passage, introduces the big tune of the cycle; this in turn introduces the presentation of the garland of songs to the beloved—a gentle melody accompanied by undulating semiquavers. These then flower into throbbing sextuplets—sunset music not dissimilar to the Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel. Next, at ‘Dann vor diesen Liedern weichet’ (Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck for the second time) there is a recapitulation of the music that we have heard at the opening of the cycle, with a similar quickening of pace as at the end of that section. This leads into an Allegro molto e con brio that reaffirms that the distance between the lovers can be conquered by a loving heart. The work ends with an exultant postlude for the piano.

The publication of this cycle must have struck Schubert as a big surprise, the eruption of a volcano at the least expected time. Beethoven’s last song-composing phase had been 1809–1810—including a number of significant Goethe settings. Since then there had been only Beethoven songs of little importance scattered here and there in the occasional almanac. In this field the Master had long fallen silent. Schubert would have had every right to believe that he had built for himself, during his incredibly fecund year of 1815, a fortress where his achievement, in song at least, was untouchable by anyone else—in the past, certainly, and in the present too. And then suddenly Beethoven published an opus the like of which had never appeared before. This was a set of six songs—but other composers had published lieder in sets. This was a set of six connected songs which belong together as a single musical construction. Beethoven had more or less invented the song cycle and, without knowing it of course, he had stolen a march on Schubert in the one field where the younger man had felt the right to consider himself pre-eminent. Beethoven’s new work was published in the year it was written (1816) and became famous overnight; the poetess Marianne von Willemer enthused about the cycle in a letter to Goethe. Poor Schubert had to wait another two years before he saw the first of his songs reach publication in an almanac.

The remainder of Schubert’s career was engaged in planning a fitting response to An die ferne Geliebte—a search for the solution to the problem of the song cycle. Beethoven had clearly sought out a text suited to his purposes, and the doctor–poet Alois Jeitteles, had provided it (the custom-made lyrics are printed nowhere else). Soon afterwards Schubert’s friend Mayrhofer provided a similarly extended poem and the result was the cantata-like Einsamkeit, D620, where the music sub-divides into six definite sections while remaining all of a piece. This was in 1818. In 1823 and 1827 Schubert wrote two song cycles to the poems of Wilhelm Müller—the immortal Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Here were twinned versions of his solution to the idea of cycle, an implied narrative where the musical numbers depended on each other without being contiguous. In 1827, for a public concert (the first which featured Schubert’s music entirely, and which was planned to mark the first centenary of Beethoven’s death) he wrote a piece for voice, horn and piano, Auf dem Strom, D943, with many Beethovenian resonances (including a quotation from that composer’s fifth symphony). And at the end of his life he wrote a set of Rellstab songs, the texts of which had been on Beethoven’s desk when he died, and which Schubert envisaged as a new homage to the idea of the Distant Beloved—in fact every song in the so-called Schwanengesang, including the Heine settings, is an exploration of this theme where the lover herself is absent and at a distance. Robert Schumann was also bewitched by Beethoven’s cycle—both by the music, and the idea behind it that he linked to his absent Clara. The opening of the sixth song is quoted at the end of his piano Fantasie, Op 17, in the sixth song of Frauenliebe und -leben, and in the finales of the Op 41 No 2 String Quartet and the Symphony No 2, Op 61.

The six ‘movements’ of the Beethoven cycle are as follows: I: Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck E flat major 3/4 A noble melody supported by crotchets and quavers; this becomes more lively with an accelerando over several bars, like the quickening heartbeat of someone excited by thoughts of being reunited with his lover. II: Ein wenig geschwinde G major 6/8 This is the music of gentle musings and longings. The whispering vocal monotone of ‘Dort im ruhigen Tal’ as the piano limns the melody is a passage that recalls Reichardt (cf that composer’s Erlkönig). Indeed there is much in this music that suggests that Beethoven was not impervious to, or ignorant of, the achievements of the Berlin lieder school although he railed against the Berlin composers on occasion. III: Allegro assai A flat major 4/4 Dancing, weaving triplets support detached vocal quavers and denote both the music of the brook and the airiness of clouds floating through the air—a gentle scherzo. IV: Nicht zu geschwinde, angenehm und mit viel Empfindung A flat major 6/8 Here is more music of winds and birdsong depicted with Beethovenian spaciousness. Mirror imagery of the beloved is reflected in the counterpoint of the accompaniment, and a quickening tempo leads into the next section. V: Vivace C major 4/4 We hear the return of May and of Spring and the unending dance of Nature in a faster version of the dactylic rhythms of Beethoven’s Symphony No 7—both persistent and inviting. The composer depicts the happiness of the birds as they build their nests; the tiny little jagged piano interludes suggest the twittering of fledglings. VI: Andante con moto, cantabile E flat major 2/4 This is the longest of the movements in that it contains two musical sections compressed into one. The piano, in an eight-bar solo passage, introduces the big tune of the cycle; this in turn introduces the presentation of the garland of songs to the beloved—a gentle melody accompanied by undulating semiquavers. These then flower into throbbing sextuplets—sunset music not dissimilar to the Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel. Next, at ‘Dann vor diesen Liedern weichet’ (Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck for the second time) there is a recapitulation of the music that we have heard at the opening of the cycle, with a similar quickening of pace as at the end of that section. This leads into an Allegro molto e con brio that reaffirms that the distance between the lovers can be conquered by a loving heart. The work ends with an exultant postlude for the piano.

The publication of this cycle must have struck Schubert as a big surprise, the eruption of a volcano at the least expected time. Beethoven’s last song-composing phase had been 1809–1810—including a number of significant Goethe settings. Since then there had been only Beethoven songs of little importance scattered here and there in the occasional almanac. In this field the Master had long fallen silent. Schubert would have had every right to believe that he had built for himself, during his incredibly fecund year of 1815, a fortress where his achievement, in song at least, was untouchable by anyone else—in the past, certainly, and in the present too. And then suddenly Beethoven published an opus the like of which had never appeared before. This was a set of six songs—but other composers had published lieder in sets. This was a set of six connected songs which belong together as a single musical construction. Beethoven had more or less invented the song cycle and, without knowing it of course, he had stolen a march on Schubert in the one field where the younger man had felt the right to consider himself pre-eminent. Beethoven’s new work was published in the year it was written (1816) and became famous overnight; the poetess Marianne von Willemer enthused about the cycle in a letter to Goethe. Poor Schubert had to wait another two years before he saw the first of his songs reach publication in an almanac.

The remainder of Schubert’s career was engaged in planning a fitting response to An die ferne Geliebte—a search for the solution to the problem of the song cycle. Beethoven had clearly sought out a text suited to his purposes, and the doctor–poet Alois Jeitteles, had provided it (the custom-made lyrics are printed nowhere else). Soon afterwards Schubert’s friend Mayrhofer provided a similarly extended poem and the result was the cantata-like Einsamkeit, D620, where the music sub-divides into six definite sections while remaining all of a piece. This was in 1818. In 1823 and 1827 Schubert wrote two song cycles to the poems of Wilhelm Müller—the immortal Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Here were twinned versions of his solution to the idea of cycle, an implied narrative where the musical numbers depended on each other without being contiguous. In 1827, for a public concert (the first which featured Schubert’s music entirely, and which was planned to mark the first centenary of Beethoven’s death) he wrote a piece for voice, horn and piano, Auf dem Strom, D943, with many Beethovenian resonances (including a quotation from that composer’s fifth symphony). And at the end of his life he wrote a set of Rellstab songs, the texts of which had been on Beethoven’s desk when he died, and which Schubert envisaged as a new homage to the idea of the Distant Beloved—in fact every song in the so-called Schwanengesang, including the Heine settings, is an exploration of this theme where the lover herself is absent and at a distance. Robert Schumann was also bewitched by Beethoven’s cycle—both by the music, and the idea behind it that he linked to his absent Clara. The opening of the sixth song is quoted at the end of his piano Fantasie, Op 17, in the sixth song of Frauenliebe und -leben, and in the finales of the Op 41 No 2 String Quartet and the Symphony No 2, Op 61.

The six ‘movements’ of the Beethoven cycle are as follows: I: Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck E flat major 3/4 A noble melody supported by crotchets and quavers; this becomes more lively with an accelerando over several bars, like the quickening heartbeat of someone excited by thoughts of being reunited with his lover. II: Ein wenig geschwinde G major 6/8 This is the music of gentle musings and longings. The whispering vocal monotone of ‘Dort im ruhigen Tal’ as the piano limns the melody is a passage that recalls Reichardt (cf that composer’s Erlkönig). Indeed there is much in this music that suggests that Beethoven was not impervious to, or ignorant of, the achievements of the Berlin lieder school although he railed against the Berlin composers on occasion. III: Allegro assai A flat major 4/4 Dancing, weaving triplets support detached vocal quavers and denote both the music of the brook and the airiness of clouds floating through the air—a gentle scherzo. IV: Nicht zu geschwinde, angenehm und mit viel Empfindung A flat major 6/8 Here is more music of winds and birdsong depicted with Beethovenian spaciousness. Mirror imagery of the beloved is reflected in the counterpoint of the accompaniment, and a quickening tempo leads into the next section. V: Vivace C major 4/4 We hear the return of May and of Spring and the unending dance of Nature in a faster version of the dactylic rhythms of Beethoven’s Symphony No 7—both persistent and inviting. The composer depicts the happiness of the birds as they build their nests; the tiny little jagged piano interludes suggest the twittering of fledglings. VI: Andante con moto, cantabile E flat major 2/4 This is the longest of the movements in that it contains two musical sections compressed into one. The piano, in an eight-bar solo passage, introduces the big tune of the cycle; this in turn introduces the presentation of the garland of songs to the beloved—a gentle melody accompanied by undulating semiquavers. These then flower into throbbing sextuplets—sunset music not dissimilar to the Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel. Next, at ‘Dann vor diesen Liedern weichet’ (Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck for the second time) there is a recapitulation of the music that we have heard at the opening of the cycle, with a similar quickening of pace as at the end of that section. This leads into an Allegro molto e con brio that reaffirms that the distance between the lovers can be conquered by a loving heart. The work ends with an exultant postlude for the piano.

The publication of this cycle must have struck Schubert as a big surprise, the eruption of a volcano at the least expected time. Beethoven’s last song-composing phase had been 1809–1810—including a number of significant Goethe settings. Since then there had been only Beethoven songs of little importance scattered here and there in the occasional almanac. In this field the Master had long fallen silent. Schubert would have had every right to believe that he had built for himself, during his incredibly fecund year of 1815, a fortress where his achievement, in song at least, was untouchable by anyone else—in the past, certainly, and in the present too. And then suddenly Beethoven published an opus the like of which had never appeared before. This was a set of six songs—but other composers had published lieder in sets. This was a set of six connected songs which belong together as a single musical construction. Beethoven had more or less invented the song cycle and, without knowing it of course, he had stolen a march on Schubert in the one field where the younger man had felt the right to consider himself pre-eminent. Beethoven’s new work was published in the year it was written (1816) and became famous overnight; the poetess Marianne von Willemer enthused about the cycle in a letter to Goethe. Poor Schubert had to wait another two years before he saw the first of his songs reach publication in an almanac.

The remainder of Schubert’s career was engaged in planning a fitting response to An die ferne Geliebte—a search for the solution to the problem of the song cycle. Beethoven had clearly sought out a text suited to his purposes, and the doctor–poet Alois Jeitteles, had provided it (the custom-made lyrics are printed nowhere else). Soon afterwards Schubert’s friend Mayrhofer provided a similarly extended poem and the result was the cantata-like Einsamkeit, D620, where the music sub-divides into six definite sections while remaining all of a piece. This was in 1818. In 1823 and 1827 Schubert wrote two song cycles to the poems of Wilhelm Müller—the immortal Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Here were twinned versions of his solution to the idea of cycle, an implied narrative where the musical numbers depended on each other without being contiguous. In 1827, for a public concert (the first which featured Schubert’s music entirely, and which was planned to mark the first centenary of Beethoven’s death) he wrote a piece for voice, horn and piano, Auf dem Strom, D943, with many Beethovenian resonances (including a quotation from that composer’s fifth symphony). And at the end of his life he wrote a set of Rellstab songs, the texts of which had been on Beethoven’s desk when he died, and which Schubert envisaged as a new homage to the idea of the Distant Beloved—in fact every song in the so-called Schwanengesang, including the Heine settings, is an exploration of this theme where the lover herself is absent and at a distance. Robert Schumann was also bewitched by Beethoven’s cycle—both by the music, and the idea behind it that he linked to his absent Clara. The opening of the sixth song is quoted at the end of his piano Fantasie, Op 17, in the sixth song of Frauenliebe und -leben, and in the finales of the Op 41 No 2 String Quartet and the Symphony No 2, Op 61.

The six ‘movements’ of the Beethoven cycle are as follows: I: Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck E flat major 3/4 A noble melody supported by crotchets and quavers; this becomes more lively with an accelerando over several bars, like the quickening heartbeat of someone excited by thoughts of being reunited with his lover. II: Ein wenig geschwinde G major 6/8 This is the music of gentle musings and longings. The whispering vocal monotone of ‘Dort im ruhigen Tal’ as the piano limns the melody is a passage that recalls Reichardt (cf that composer’s Erlkönig). Indeed there is much in this music that suggests that Beethoven was not impervious to, or ignorant of, the achievements of the Berlin lieder school although he railed against the Berlin composers on occasion. III: Allegro assai A flat major 4/4 Dancing, weaving triplets support detached vocal quavers and denote both the music of the brook and the airiness of clouds floating through the air—a gentle scherzo. IV: Nicht zu geschwinde, angenehm und mit viel Empfindung A flat major 6/8 Here is more music of winds and birdsong depicted with Beethovenian spaciousness. Mirror imagery of the beloved is reflected in the counterpoint of the accompaniment, and a quickening tempo leads into the next section. V: Vivace C major 4/4 We hear the return of May and of Spring and the unending dance of Nature in a faster version of the dactylic rhythms of Beethoven’s Symphony No 7—both persistent and inviting. The composer depicts the happiness of the birds as they build their nests; the tiny little jagged piano interludes suggest the twittering of fledglings. VI: Andante con moto, cantabile E flat major 2/4 This is the longest of the movements in that it contains two musical sections compressed into one. The piano, in an eight-bar solo passage, introduces the big tune of the cycle; this in turn introduces the presentation of the garland of songs to the beloved—a gentle melody accompanied by undulating semiquavers. These then flower into throbbing sextuplets—sunset music not dissimilar to the Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel. Next, at ‘Dann vor diesen Liedern weichet’ (Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck for the second time) there is a recapitulation of the music that we have heard at the opening of the cycle, with a similar quickening of pace as at the end of that section. This leads into an Allegro molto e con brio that reaffirms that the distance between the lovers can be conquered by a loving heart. The work ends with an exultant postlude for the piano.